Topic: Rumored Nrev specs

[ThePerm]

hmm theres 512 mb of flash memory..im betting there will be an equal amount of onboard memory

[Truthliesn1seyes]

Han_Solo's current post

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Then if your worried and skeptical about the Revolution having 4 Custom G5 cores in one PowerPC CPU, why not you answer of how xbox 360 can run 3 cores that run 500 MHz faster than each of the 4 cores in the Revolution; that are much cooler than current single G5 cores ?? Answer me that, please.....i know the answer, i want you to answer.

I cant believe this, this is total fanboyism if you ask me.

Also the Cell, has 7-8 cores running for the PS3, they are of PowerPC architecture, and they all run at 3.2 GHz, MUCH faser than the 4 cores in the Revolution that run at 2.5 GHz. Though the PS3 does have totally redone cores in the PowerPC chip, for cooling.

I have done extensive physics in the University of Western Australia, and the maths I have given is totally correct. I can go on and on with even more complicated equations, but thats if you take the subject further, i may not even talk, because its pointless repeating

If i were you all i would do now is just wait for now......( a smily face with a wink was here but it didn't get pasted)

[jasonditz]

" the maths I have given is totally correct"

Well, I'm sold.

[K-RPG]

Reggie Fils-Aime's can't spell either, It really holds no relevance. His numbers seem legit, and he's tried to explain the heating issue. The only way to know for sure, is wait for Nintendo to announce there specs. Until then, he can't be proven wrong -- we already know he was right about what type the memory was -- that's it.  

[HereticPB]

You can suck at English but be brilliant beyond belief!

There is another guy saying that Rev will use a 2 core PPC processor 2.7ghz each and is 40% faster than current G5 processors.

[Truthliesn1seyes]

http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/v....php?1117158487

Seems like Nintendo will be attending some PAX exhibition in Aug. Its open to the public too. This seems like the perfect moment for Nintendo to give everyone some hands on time with the Rev so they can really see what its about. This is the approach I believe they'll take since, like the DS IMO, the Rev will not be appreciated on paper and video.

[jasonditz]

Umm... isn't PAX the Penny Arcade Expo?

[PowerHair]

Yes it is. I seriously doubt they'd unveiled anything new at PAX even if they are going.

[Truthliesn1seyes]

Also, Gamespot has an interview up with George Harrison, NOA vice pres.  Its a good read.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/26/news_6126595.html

[Hostile Creation]

I bet Nintendo Revolution actually opens up dimensional rifts that lead you into a programmed game world, so you actually live the game.  Failure results in a push back into your own world.  GRAPHICS.

[KDR_11k]

The X360 can run three cores by using severely stripped down PPC cores, removing even game-relevant features like out-of-order execution (I've mentioned that way too often lately...). In-order processors are vasly less complex and therefore cooler at higher clock speed, though in practice not necessarily any faster than an oooE capable processor with a lower clock rate (Remember kids, Chris Hecker said 3-10 times slower!).

Claiming the Cell has eight PPC cores reeks of idiocy or ignorance. There is only one, stripped down PPC core in a Cell, the rest are vector processing units (SPEs). That's like saying the PS2 is a three-processor machine because it has those two VPUs. Or hell, why don't we start counting the GPU as a processor and claim it's a PPC core?

Perfect anything in a physics context means a system that behaves according to simplified math, usually ignoring a few factors that are always present in reality, like friction. A perfect conductor is a superconductor, a perfect resistor has zero deviation. Perfect cooling would mean a system that behaves ideally at all times (probably even constant room temperatures).

Liquid metal cooling, water cooling, etc just transport heat to other places, usually huge heatsinks. The heat doesn't get "destroyed" (if it did we'd have to rewrite modern physics from scratch), it can only be distributed. The huge heatsinks you can put on watercoolers would never fit on the processor and can dissipate the heat more easily. The Revolution would still need appropriately large heatsinks and perhaps huge fans to cool that, absolutely impossible in that case. Hell, my PC has cooling systems that are larger than the Rev's case!

Seriously, if this was Roulette my money would still lie on the "single core" field.

[BigJim]

I was going to post pretty much everything KDR did.

Let's start with Cell: KDR explained that succinctly. It's one simplified core (in-order execution, 2 instructions per clock) with a number of simplified vectors (no cache, 2 instructions per clock, no hardware branch prediction). It's also been explained in tech circles that the Cell would be considerably weak for a desktop chip due to the simplified PPE, despite its high GHz clock. So we're not talking about the same class of chips here.

As far as the 360 goes, they're cooler than G5's because they're not G5's. In fact, it's been said that the 3 cores in the 360 are actually roughly similar to the Cell's PPE core. Knowing what we know about the Cell, we can extrapolate that the CPU in the Xbox 360 is also not nearly as powerful as a G5 either, much less 3 of them.

The Cell and 360 don't inherit properties from the existing PPC series (400, 700, 900). The philosophy is different and they come from their own lineage. So we're not dealing with G5-class hardware here no matter how it's diced. They lack complexities which allows them to maintain a reasonable heat/cost proposition regardless of the GHz clock.

So that brings us back to why there would be a quad-core G5 in the Revolution. Everybody else is using cheaper PPC cores. Why would Nintendo go the FAR more expensive route if they plan to have the cheapest console and wouldn't benefit from much of what contributes to the higher cost?

Obviously this guy is smart. Surely he understands that not all GHz are the same. It has nothing to do with fanboyism. It's about being a realist.  I don't doubt the Revolution will be powerful, but if anything they will take the same simplified PPC route, whether it's 1 core or 8 cores, 1 GHZ or 3 GHz.    

[KDR_11k]

Those vector processors have 32MB of dedicated RAM with very fast access each, I think that counts as cache.
Doesn't branch prediction only apply to out-of-order processors anyway? I see no reason for an in-order processor to care about the future.

I expect Nintendo to use a less simplified processor (not in-order) because having only one in-order core would kill their performance and hell, when there's only one core you can make it a decent one. One processor with out-of-order execution sounds like the easiest to code for, which is another point for it. Also I don't think the GC was in-order so that out-of-order execution might be required for GC emulation (not sure if an in-order processor could keep up with that unoptimized code).

[BigJim]

Each vector has its own local memory, technically not cache per se. But I believe the local memory is SRAM, thus pretty fast, like cache. For what it's worth.

I do like the "somewhat more powerful" single core idea if they can pull it off. At the end of the day there's probably not going to be too much of a difference among the three of them.

[supersoaker]

i dunno if it's been pointed out yet, but these are EXACTLY the same specs the infamous Aries had said a month ago.

now this raises two questions: is Aries and Han_Solo the same person?  or are these specs actually accurate?  so far 3 separate 'sources' have 'confirmed' these specs: Han_solo, Aries, and Techtree.

edit: here's the Aries transcript from Brokensaints:

"Aries Says:
"April 28th, 2005 at 1:13 pm

"Well, it seems most people here do not believe me anymore. But as I stated before, I will be proven true come E3. I know that this is a bold statement, but one I can make since I’m absolutely convinced of the info I provided. I noticed someone asking for a description of the NOA building? Well, I could go even further and give you a description of the HQ of Nintendo of Japan which I visited a couple of times while I was still working for NOA. But would that make you feel better? Not actually knowing yourself what the building looks like? For all you know, I could simply make something up just to give you the false impression that I am 100% plausible. I really don’t see any worth in such a description to be honest.

"Anyway, to clear some other things up: the final design for the Revolution hasn’t been decided upon yet. At least, not as far as we know over here. So this could mean that they’ll actually show some prototype of the final design at E3, just like they did with the DS last year. Of course we have an SDK, but that machine probably wont look like the final design either. Just like with the current SDK’s for the Xbox 360.

"As for specs, since you seem to be really privy on them, the Revolution will indeed support both 720p as well as 1080i. The GPU of the console packs quite a punch. It’s actually two cores linked together with ATi’s alternative on nVidia’s SLI. Though no releasedate has probably been determined yet by Nintendo (current releasedate looks to be around March next year in Japan), this could mean that Revolution will be the first device to support this ATi technology. Even before they introduce it to the PC market.

"Now the cores themselves are completely custom-made by a different team than the core for the Xbox 360. It’s known as the RN520, where the N actually stands for Nintendo. One core in itself, isn’t as fast as the R500-ish core of the Xbox 360, but together they are quite a bit more powerful. The CPU consists of four cores each running at 2,5 GHz and is based on the G5 architecture. Each core has it’s own 128KB L1 cachememory, and they all share a L2 cache of 512KB. Next to this, the CPU and GPU share 512MB of memory, just like the Xbox 360 does. Also, the GPU has it’s own on-die memory for quick tasks which amounts to 16MB of eDRAM.

"There’s also a seperate processor for sound, which is quite advanced and takes a lot of workload off the CPU. Last but not least, the Revolution features a PPU for complex physics, which utilizes it’s own 32MB of memory. So all in all, it’s quite the complex machine with many different processors. Still, it’s rather easy to develop for because of the excellent development tools which Nintendo delivered. These are all GameCube based with a lot of completely new features built-in."

[K-RPG]

Aries made a bunch of lame predictions regarding the Revolution's release, Han Solo has never said anything like that. So far, he was right about what we know -- in that the system uses 1T-SRAM -- and he did nail the 360 specs, so -- I'll wait until Nintendo makes the announcement before I count.

[supersoaker]

okay then.

so i think that maybe Aries should gain some credibility back, because like i said, this was posted a freaking month ago.
so what if he was wrong about the predictions?  those don't concern me anymore.  what concerns me is how freaking
similar Aries' specs are compared to Han_Solo.

if this turns out to be true, he'll be the one laughing at us.

dammit, i don't know what to believe anymore!  

[K-RPG]

Either that, or Han Solo is lying -- and took those speculations right from Aries, another lying bastard. We'll see.  

[LuWoo75]

Quote
Originally posted by: supersoaker
okay then.

so i think that maybe Aries should gain some credibility back, because like i said, this was posted a freaking month ago.
so what if he was wrong about the predictions?  those don't concern me anymore.  what concerns me is how freaking
similar Aries' specs are compared to Han_Solo.

if this turns out to be true, he'll be the one laughing at us.

dammit, i don't know what to believe anymore!

Yeah there are so many rumors and conspiricy theories on every board each one contradicting and confirming at the same time who know's what is real.  I went over to the boards on gamespot and there is so much speculation over there i havta laugh at it all.

[LuWoo75]

It seems that the specs have been confirmed here is Link.  I dunno maybe they got those specs off the G4 boards who knows?

[nickmitch]

I bet that Nintendo is not even sure.

[ThePerm]

also you guys have to remember nitnendo is probably working on different versions of the final hardware..with room for change. Remember when gamecubes specs were announced an when they were finalized they were a bit different.

[Darc Requiem]

The 4 core 2.5 Ghz CPU seems to kee reappearing, I'm starting to think that their is some truth in it. If they are G5's they will probably be somewhat stripped down but where there is smoke there's fire usually. I mean we kept hearing about how the 360 was going to have three 3.5 ghz cores and that was pretty much dead on. It ended up with three 3.2 Ghz cores. We'll just have to wait for Nintendo to unveil the specs officially.

[BigJim]

Repeating lies won't make it so. The G5 issue has been covered ad nausea. There are no logical reasons to believe its accurate. The number of cores are equally suspect when they're allegedly G5s. When this information actually makes it onto a credible major gaming site, then the information will carry some weight.

Some folks don't seem to understand how much heat IBM has been getting for not being able to supply 970's to Apple in the quantities they want, or cool enough to be able to add it to their powerbooks. Expecting a quad-core G5 is expecting IBM to overcome serious heat issues, power consumption, more than quadruple their present production yields, overcome dual-core production, overcome quad-core production, somehow make the quad-core chip inexpensive enough for Nintendo to come close to breaking even on a $200-$300 box, and do it all sometime in the next 6-15 months.

In a nutshell, get a magic wand. IBM might be able to ship dual-core chips for high end Apple boxes by the end of the year. Everything else? No way.

Revolution will be powerful enough, and could very well have a quad-core chip (though there is no proof other than speculation breeding more speculation). I just think people need to get off the G5 train for these reasons and the others explained before. No sense in repeating myself after this point.

[jasonditz]

Just to play Devil's Advocate (even though I agree with you that its virtually impossible) I will say this:

Never count out IBM.

Assuming the rumors are true, hey've got two potentially huge customers for low-power G5's in Apple and Nintendo. Something like that has a way of getting things done.